Hello, Nothing

Whenever I think of Saroyan, I see a boundlessly energetic boy making a doodle. It’s fun, wholesome, relaxing; another way of breathing. It’s easy, too—“Look Ma, I’m typing!” It goes on for years. Parts of it turn up in magazines, books, theaters, movies, and they are all interchangeable. For Time, which can erode granite and turn worms into butterflies and mature some writers, leaves Saroyan alone. Papa You’re Crazy is an exact contemporary of The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze.

It is about a divorced father whose ten-year-old son comes to spend a few months with him at a house on the Pacific coast. No television, no frozen desserts, no fish-tailed station wagon. Just Pop, who is a “crazy, hungary writer” with little money, much gusto, and even more reverence for guess-who. They cook, sleep soundly, watch the sky, light driftwood fires, play word games, and talk. In the end, the son wants to be a writer too. So would Eisenhower. It looks like so much fun and so little bother that it would be masochistic to want to be anything else.

RP

About the Author

Robert Phelps

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Whenever I think of Saroyan, I see a boundlessly energetic boy making a doodle. It’s fun, wholesome, relaxing; another way of breathing. It’s easy, too—“Look Ma, I’m typing!” It goes on for years. Parts of it turn up in magazines, books, theaters, movies, and they are all interchangeable. For Time, which can erode granite and turn worms into butterflies and mature some writers, leaves Saroyan alone. Papa You’re Crazy is an exact contemporary of The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze.

It is about a divorced father whose ten-year-old son comes to spend a few months with him at a house on the Pacific coast. No television, no frozen desserts, no fish-tailed station wagon. Just Pop, who is a “crazy, hungary writer” with little money, much gusto, and even more reverence for guess-who. They cook, sleep soundly, watch the sky, light driftwood fires, play word games, and talk. In the end, the son wants to be a writer too. So would Eisenhower. It looks like so much fun and so little bother that it would be masochistic to want to be anything else.